(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive having a disk tray and, more particularly, to a disk drive having a push button for inserting/ejecting the disk tray.
(b) Description of the Related Art
Disk drives having disk trays therein are widely used in computer systems for driving optical disks or cartridge disks. FIG. 1 shows a conventional optical disk drive in a front view thereof. The optical disk drive, generally designated by numeral 30, includes a housing 31 for defining a slot therein, a disk tray (not shown) received in the slot for mounting thereon an optical disk, and an insertion/ejection mechanism (not shown) for the disk tray to insert/eject the optical disk into/from the slot. The insertion/ejection mechanism is driven by a drive motor not shown.
The optical disk drive 30 further includes a shutter or flap 32 disposed at the front entrance of the slot, the shutter 32 being closed when the disk tray is received in the slot and opened when at least a portion of the disk tray is outside the slot. The optical disk drive 30 further includes a push button 33 disposed on the front panel of the housing 31, generally at a location below the right portion of the shutter 32, for controlling the insertion/ejection of the disk tray.
It is generally difficult to depress the push button 33 when the disk tray is ejected from the slot because the push button 33 is located below the disk tray. To overcome the difficulty in depressing the push button 33 for insertion of the ejected disk tray, most conventional optical disk drives use a configuration wherein the insertion/ejection mechanism is controlled for insertion of the disk tray by a location sensor that detects the location of the disk tray being slightly deviated from the original ejected position of the disk tray due to a slight thrust force applied by the user to the front end of the disk tray toward the slot.
However, the thrust force applied to the front end of the disk tray also acts on the insertion/ejection mechanism. The thrust force is not generally controlled because the thrust force depends on control by the user, which may cause a malfunction or damage in the insertion/ejection mechanism due to an excess thrust force. Thus, the reliability of the optical disk drives is deteriorated, especially in an initial service period of the disk drive.